


Yakko Gets Shot

by charcolor



Category: Animaniacs
Genre: ???? kinda???? there's elements, Gen, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:28:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27863066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charcolor/pseuds/charcolor
Summary: Yakko gets shot in the torso during filming, but it's okay, because it's just a prop gun.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 189





	Yakko Gets Shot

**Author's Note:**

> i had a dream the other night that something like this happened in an episode of animaniacs and i woke up and said: my story now.

The Warners were winners. Even if they couldn't defeat their adversaries in a situation, they could always make a clean escape to safety. That's just how it was. It was in the show bible.

They didn't always know exactly what to do, though. Over half of their dialogue and acting was improvised. The directors learned to go with it and just direct them to places to go or things to do. They liked it that way. Lots of freedom to be themselves and take the story into their hands. There was just that rule that everyone agreed on: the Warners could not ultimately be defeated.

Right now, they were running from assassins. Maybe a bit intense for a kid show, but they'd argue that they've done worse. After all, Dot technically died on screen once. Not really, of course, but it was definitely not easy for Yakko to watch his baby sister die slowly in his arms, even knowing full well it was all an act, both in-universe and out.

They didn't know how to defeat the assassins. They just had to figure it out like they always did. They were hiding in some sort of warehouse, stocked full of boxes of...what looked to be alcohol.

"Oh, poo," Wakko muttered, examining the boxes. "We're too young to drink this."

Dot smiled sweetly, also looking at the boxes. "We coooould...trick them into drinking alcohol and being too drunk to shoot us."

Yakko scratched his neck. "Uhhhhh, that seems pretty sketchy to show on a kid show. And pretty not legal."

"Trying to murder us isn't legal either."

Yakko shrugged. "Touché."

The doors they had come in through were locked from the inside, but a banging could be heard. They had guns, so they could easily shoot through the doors if they had enough bullets to waste.

Oh, that was it! If they wasted all their bullets getting in through the door, they'd have none left for the Warners themselves.

Catching on to this idea, Dot and Wakko got to work taking boxes of booze and setting them up at the doors, as Yakko cleared his throat loudly. "Well, gee, I'm sure glad these fellas don't have guns! They could totally shoot us through this door!" He stretched his arm and face out to knock on one of the doors. "Especially if I got reeeeally close like this!"

After a beat, Yakko heard the cocking of a gun. Wakko and Dot hurried to stock up boxes of booze against the door before the three of them retreated to the other side of the warehouse. There was a door here, too. They could hide there while the assassins were wasting their bullets. 

Yakko creaked the door open just a little bit to see what was on the other side. It was a pretty vacant gray place with doors that probably led to other storerooms. He didn't actually remember where they were right now, because it didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but a big warehouse made sense.

There was someone on the other side, though. An extra assassin that was unaccounted for. And before Yakko could close the door or warn his siblings, they fired.

"CUT!" 

Yakko could barely hear the director's voice over the echo of the gunshot. He bit his tongue, more harshly than he meant to, to muffle his own scream, and he instinctively clutched his torso as he fell to the floor.

Everyone knew he wasn't in any danger. Not only was he a cartoon, but these guns weren't real. The bullets they fired were strong enough to make dents in walls or maybe break skin, but not enough to cause mortal injuries. Of course, that didn't mean it hurt any less to get hit by one of them.

"What the heck, Yakko?" Dot glared down at him, though it could have been more worry than anger in her eyes. "You gotta be more careful than _that!"_

Despite the excruciating pain in his torso, Yakko smiled up at her. "You know, sis, you can swear for real. The kids aren't watching this."

"Oh, okay!" Dot cleared her throat with a smile, then glared at him again. "What the _fuck,_ Yakko?"

Wakko had been quietly looking down at him with his hands over his mouth. He lowered his hands to finally speak. "I thought the guns were fake! Did they give 'em real guns?"

"No, no, the guns are fake," Yakko told him. The bullet was very easily pulled out of where it hit and thrown aside. "It still hurts a bit to get shot, though."

But he really didn't want the shooting--no pun intended--to end just because of this. Yakko really hated having to hold their recordings off for things like hospital time. If they wanted to have a successful run-through, he had to ignore this and keep going.

As a cartoon character in a slapstick-heavy show, he'd already been through a lot, anyway. He was used to standing up despite the pain he was in and asking, "Do I need any cleaning up?"

Dot and Wakko each flashed him an OK symbol and said, "You're good!"

"Alright, then," called the director, "let's take it from the, uh...opening the back door."

They got back to their places, and the guns at the doors continued firing. Yakko opened the door a bit again and immediately closed it this time. "Uh-oh, looks like we're cornered."

Wakko and Dot had taken out a chessboard off screen and set up the pieces in a position where white was clearly losing. Wakko rubbed his stomach. "It's 'cause I've been eating your pieces when you're not looking."

They went on like that for another seven minutes or so, eventually outsmarting the assassins and getting their way, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Yakko was struggling to act. After the filming was over, he couldn't help but collapse on the floor.

"What's with you?" Dot crossed her arms. "We weren't taking _that_ long."

"I'm dying," Yakko mumbled. He was smiling, but clearly not as up to joking around as he was pretending to be. "Go on without me. Tell my wife...that she's kind of a freak for marrying a fourteen-year-old."

"Cut it out! We gotta get back home." Dot grabbed Yakko by the neck to pull him up to his feet. "Or to IHOP."

Yakko didn't collapse again, but Dot and Wakko saw him clutching his stomach. Wakko grabbed his arm and looked up at him. "Ya got a tummy ache? Didja drink lactose again?"

"Is that what they call the bullets in the prop guns?"

All of Dot's irritation vanished as she grabbed her brother's other arm. "Wait, does it still hurt? Do we need to get the nurse? Is it bleeding?"

You'd think it'd be easy to tell if there was blood, but toons usually bleed ink since it's what they're made of, and the Warners had black bodies that matched the ink perfectly. Now that it was brought up, Yakko did notice what felt like a dried-up blotch of ink where the bullet had hit him, but there wasn't anything wet.

It still really hurt, though, for some reason. It was giving Yakko a migraine, which made him dizzy, which just made everything incredibly inconvenient. The fake bullets hurt, but they weren't supposed to hurt _this_ bad, were they?

Did it hit a little too close to some vital organ? It was the strength of the blow that always hurt more than the penetration itself when it came to these things, probably, plus toons weren't given many organs in the first place, so it wouldn't be lethal in any case, but...

Well, it definitely didn't hit his heart, at least. Maybe it got close to his actual stomach. Did he have a liver? He was lactose intolerant, apparently, so he probably had a liver. Or was it the intestines that were affected by that?

At this point, Yakko had been standing there mildly dissociating for a full minute, so Dot and Wakko each grabbed one of his arms and pulled him off his feet to run him over to the doctor's office. Fortunately, it was only a few seconds away, thanks to their ability to effectively teleport by just running really fast toward their destination, like in EarthBound.

Yakko just barely readjusted to his surroundings by the time they got there, and he crossed his arms. "Hey, what's the big idea? We're not gonna make it to the kids-eat-free-with-adult-purchase deal goin' on at IHOP."

Immediately after saying this, he toppled backward, into the waiting room chair. Wakko hung his tongue out idly and pointed at him. _"That's_ the big idea."

"How're we gonna trick an adult into paying for us if you can't even stand up for five seconds?" Dot huffed. "Everyone's gonna think you're drunk or somethin'!"

Wakko gasped, then put his hands on his hips. _"Yakko Middle Name Warner!_ Did you drink the booze that was on set?"

Yakko shook his head. "Uhhhh, I don't think the directors woulda allowed that."

Then again, maybe he did drink it somehow and just didn't remember? He didn't know what being drunk was like--you'd think existing for ninety years would've made him bored enough to try it, but he has standards, apparently--but it probably didn't feel much different than this. He wasn't supposed to be this lightheaded.

He didn't have time to argue with his siblings before being hauled off to be checked up on.

The doctor did some basic toon health tests that Yakko didn't really pay attention to, but she tapped him on the shoulder for his full attention when actually asking relevant questions.

"You were injured on set?" 

Yakko waved a hand. "Oh, hardly. Basically just a real intense Nerf gun."

"So, a normal gun."

"Nah, the bullets sting a little, but they're not tough enough to actually injure anyone. It just got me somewhere, but I took it out."

The doctor nodded and crossed her arms. "And how often does this happen?"

"Uhhhh, I dunno." He smirked. "It's Animaniacs, lady, there's always _somebody_ getting the short end of the slapstick. And sometimes it's me!"

The doctor typed something on her laptop and looked back at him. "Yakko, for a cartoon character...your blood pressure is awfully low. Did you know that?"

"Why would I know my blood pressure?" Yakko flicked one of his arms. "I don't even have real blood. You sure you're a doctor?"

"Hm." The woman narrowed her eyes. "I guess it makes sense you wouldn't know your normal blood pressure or anything of the sort. You never come here at all, do you?"

"I'm a busy guy! I don't have time to throw away on a doctor visit! It's not like cartoon injuries don't go away right away anyway, so it's--"

He was interrupted by his migraine suddenly getting stronger, and everything suddenly getting blurrier. He couldn't help but to fall backward to the examination table, and he was too lightheaded at this point to sit back up. The doctor said something else, but Yakko couldn't focus enough to hear it. He tried to lift his head to look up at her. "Could you repeat that?"

"You lose more ink than your body can replenish, because you never get your slapstick injuries checked out. That's why you have low blood pressure, because you don't have enough ink in you." The doctor forcibly lowered his head back down. "You should be fine. Just get some bedrest and take a break from filming for a day or two. I'll write you a doctor's note."

Yakko sat right back up, ignoring how awful it felt. "I don't have time for bedrest! I gotta take my sibs to IHOP!"

Of course, immediately after saying this, he fell off the exam table onto the floor and grew so lightheaded that he could barely register the movement in his surroundings. It seemed like he was being picked up and carried somewhere, and he could hear some people talking. It sounded like his siblings. When did they get here? Were they hiding in the examination room place?

By the time Yakko got a better sense of awareness again, he was back in the water tower lying on his bed. He would have assumed it was all a weird lucid dream if it weren't for the fact that he was literally tied to the bed with a rope and his little siblings were looming over him with arms crossed.

"Hey, hey, hey, what's the big idea?" Yakko wriggled around on the bed. The ropes weren't tight enough to totally trap him, but they were secure enough to prevent him from getting up. "Why'm I being restrained?"

"Doctor's orders!" Wakko waved a finger. "Like they always say: no IHOP 'til the pain stops!"

Dot nodded and pointed a finger at Yakko. "This is what you get for never going to the doctor whenever you get shot!"

Yakko rubbed his hand over the spot that still ached a bit. "This is literally the first time I've been shot in my life. Unless you count the rabies shots--"

"Or when you get beaten up or dismembered or whatever!" Dot threw her hands up. "What're ya gonna do when you get shot in the head on set?"

"It's like I always say: no IHOP for gunshots! Now you stay in bed until your blood's all back, young man!" Wakko smiled giddily toward Dot and quietly added, "I love when I get to call him that."

Yakko pouted. "So, what, you're just gonna go to lunch without me? You're gonna leave me to die in the water tower without any pancakes?"

"Of course not!" Dot lightly bonked him on the head. "They do that kids eat free thing every Thursday, you know! We're gonna stay here and play Mouse Trap!"

Wakko nodded, goofily smiling before returning to a stern expression. "But before we play Mouse Trap with you, you're gonna sleep! And you're gonna _like it!"_

Yakko really had no choice anymore. He sighed through a smile. "Fine. I'm beat anyway. Can you untie me, though? Promise I won't sleepwalk."

The younger Warners smiled and complied, pulling the ropes off in one movement. They went off somewhere as Yakko rolled over to his side and closed his eyes. His siblings probably went to watch TV or something, but it was just as likely that they were hiding under the bed making sure Yakko didn't jump out of bed and immediately pass out. They'd probably get bored and leave eventually, though.

In any case, he knew they would stay in the water tower until he woke up. He really didn't like being alone, and he never admitted this out loud, but his siblings probably caught on to it anyway. They were pretty clever.

After all, they were Warners, and the Warners were winners. Even if they got shot during filming and ended up nearly passing out due to low blood pressure because they didn't like going to the clinic.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for not including the ball pit it's just that i assumed it was a one off gag and not canon. but maybe i'll be proven wrong in season two.


End file.
